1 Institutional Checklist

The following checklist may help you in planning work at an institutional level to provide a podcasting service or to improve current activities.

1.1 Overview

How would you summarise your institutional approach to podcasting? Is it a centralised activity or localised to departmental activity? How do people find online audio-visual material at your institution? Do you have a central web page or through Google? It may help you to start to create an overview of your setup and situation, list institutional priorities and start to note down the the overall processes for material being created and the different types of material that might be created - outreach, teaching, research etc. The following questions will help add more depth to any summary of activity.

1.2 Institutional Podcasting

What do you see as the primary benefits of podcasting?
What teams/personnel are involved at your institution in podcasting?
What are their roles in the process?
How much of their time is dedicated to those podcasting tasks?
Who has overall management/responsibility for podcasting?
Are there steering groups involved at any level and where do they draw their membership from?
Where are the major costs incurred?
What areas do you see as having opportunities for cost savings/efficiencies?
What technical areas could be advanced?
What technical areas are currently problematic?
What are the top 5 risks to your podcasting processes, and their solutions?

1.3 Audio Video Capture

This section is focussed upon the initial digitisation and content production aspects.

What material are you targeting/getting (both academic and non-academic areas)?
Who is responsible for sourcing the material?
Where do you capture the material?
How is the material captured/digitised (differs for lectures, interviews, outreach, etc)?
Where/how is that source material stored?
What metadata is captured to accompany the media?
How do you record the metadata and when?

1.4 Content Processing

This section looks at content issues from post digitisation to final published outputs.

What editing work is done to the original material?
Who does the editing?
How much time is spent on editing?
What guidelines are provided for editing (e.g. times, focus, styling, titles)?
What software/hardware is available for editing, and who has access to it?
What outputs do you have from the editing process?
What compressed formats do you support, and why?
Who does the compression for published work, and what do they use?
What metadata is added to the final outputs?

1.5 Content Publishing

This section is concerned with the practicalities of distribution and syndication methods.

Where do you publish your podcasts to?
Who provides the public webspace for published material?
What does they use to provide this service?
How much resiliency is built into the file hosting system?
How are files placed on/in this webspace?
How much space do you presently have available, and what was the criteria for this quantity?
What do you use to provide the published RSS feed?
Who/what is responsible for data entry to the RSS system?
When do you create the feed?
Who/what consumes that RSS feed?
Do you offer other forms of syndication?

1.6 Content Management

What aspects of the podcasting process do you control/manage?
Do you have a central authority for podcasting?
When do you first learn of new material?
Who is responsible for content on each of your distribution systems?
Do you plan/schedule content for release?
How do you track the status/progress of podcasts within your service?
Do you have an automated/digital system for content management?
How do you identify content within your processes/systems?
Do you host or surface your material in a third party service?
Who is responsible for maintaining your iTunes U/YouTube interface?
How do you update your iTunes U/YouTube interface, and how often?

1.7 Storage

What elements of the podcasting process do you store?
What methods/systems do you use?
How long do you store the material for?

1.8 Quality Control

Do you maintain any standards for published material?
Who checks that these standards are met?
Where in your processes is Quality Control done, and how is it implemented/enforced?

1.9 Legal

What legal responsibilities do you have in regard to podcasting?
How do you ensure those responsibilities are met?
What release/consent forms do you use?
How do you administer the legal processes?
What problems to you encounter administering these processes?
What is your take down policy?

1.10 Marketing

Who is your target audience ?
Have you considered a press release or discussed a communication plan ?
What channels do you have to communicate with your key audiences ?
How will you track usage?
How will you evaluate wether your marketing strategy is working?

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